Becoming a health and physical education teacher: Student teacher ‘performances’ in the HPE subject department office

This study considered how physical education teacher education students ‘perform’ their ‘selves’ within subject department offices during the practicum or ‘teaching practice’. The research was framed by a conceptual framework informed by the work of Goffman on ‘performance’ and ‘front’. The findings revealed three common performances across the whole group across all sites. These were: performance of sports talk, bodily performances, and performance of masculine repertoires. Such performances were considered to be inconsistent with the coursework ideals and principles within the teacher education programme but in step with the general ethos of most PE department offices.

Conserving Biodiversity as If People Matter: A Case Study from India

India has rich traditions of nature conservation as well as a vigorous official program of protection of nature reserves developed over the last 40 years. However, the officialp rograms uffers fromt otal relianceo n authoritarianm anagement arrangements in which decisions are made centrally and coercion is used to implement them. At the same time, the state apparatus organises subsidized resource flows to the urbanindustrial- intensivea griculturalc omplex which promote inefficient,n on-sustainable resource-use patterns that are inimical to conservation of biodiversity. These processes are illustrated within the concrete setting of the district of Uttara Kannada in southern India. It is suggested that the interests of conservation would be served far better by an approach that withdraws the subsidies to the elite so that a much more efficient, sustainable and equitable pattern of resource use, compatible with conservation of biodiversity, can be instituted. In conjunction with this, the larger society should involve local people in working out detailed plans for conservation of biodiversity and offer them adequate authority as well as appropriate financial incentives to implement these plans. The paper goes on to illustrate how such an approach may be implemented in the case of Uttara Kannada.

Stability of assembled epitopes on human chorionic gonadotropin to covalent modifications

A measure of stability of a given epitope is an important parameter in the exploration of the utility of a desired MAb. It defines the conditions necessary for using MAbs as an investigative tool in several research methodologies and therapeutic protocols. Despite these obvious interests the lack of simple and rapid assay systems for quantitating MAb-Ag interactions has largely hampered these studies. A single step MAb-Solid Phase Radioimmunoassay (SS-SPRIA), is described which eliminates errors that may arise with multistep sandwich assays. SS-SPRIA has been used to demonstrate the differential stability of the assembled epitopes on gonadotropins. Differential stability towards specific reagents can be exploited to identify aminoacid residues at the epitopic site. Inactivation of an epitopic region is indicative of the presence of the group modified, provided conformational relaxations are not induced due to modifications at distant sites. Here we provide evidence to validate these conclusions.

Kin selection, social polymorphism, and reproductive allocation in ants

Social groups are common across animal species. The reasons for grouping are straightforward when all individuals gain directly from cooperating. However, the situation becomes more complex when helping entails costs to the personal reproduction of individuals. Kin selection theory has offered a fruitful framework to explain such cooperation by stating that individuals may spread their genes not only through their own reproduction, but also by helping related individuals reproduce. However, kin selection theory also implicitly predicts conflicts when groups consist of non-clonal individuals, i.e. relatedness is less than one. Then, individual interests are not perfectly aligned, and each individual is predicted to favour the propagation of their own genome over others. Social insects provide a solid study system to study the interplay between cooperation and conflict. Breeding systems in social insects range from solitary breeding to eusocial colonies displaying complete division of reproduction between the fertile queen and the sterile worker caste. Within colonies, additional variation is provided by the presence of several reproductive individuals. In many species, the queen mates multiply, which causes the colony to consist of half-sib instead of full-sib offspring. Furthermore, in many species colonies contain multiple breeding queens, which further dilutes relatedness between colony members. Evolutionary biology is thus faced with the challenge to answer why such variation in social structure exists, and what the consequences are on the individual and population level. The main part of this thesis takes on this challenge by investing the dynamics of socially polymorphic ant colonies. The first four chapters investigate the causes and consequences of different social structures, using a combination of field studies, genetic analyses and laboratory experiments. The thesis ends with a theoretical chapter focusing on different social interactions (altruism and spite), and the evolution of harming traits. The main results of the thesis show that social polymorphism has the potential to affect the behaviour and traits of both individuals and colonies. For example, we found that genetic polymorphism may increase the phenotypic variation between individuals in colonies, and that socially polymorphic colonies may show different life history patterns. We also show that colony cohesion may be enhanced even in multiple-queen colonies through patterns of unequal reproduction between queens. However, the thesis also demonstrates that spatial and temporal variation between both populations and environments may affect individual and colony traits, to the degree that results obtained in one place or at one time may not be applicable in other situations. This opens up potential further areas of research to explain these differences.

Prognostic markers in head and neck carcinoma

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is the sixth most common cancer worldwide. Well-known risk factors include tobacco smoking and alcohol consumption. Overall survival has improved, but is still low especially in developing countries. One reason for this is the often advanced stage of the disease at the time of diagnosis, but also lack of reliable prognostic tools to enable individualized patient treatment to improve outcome. To date, the TNM classification still serves as the best disease evaluation criterion, although it does not take into account the molecular basis of the tumor. The need for surrogate molecular markers for more accurate disease prediction has increased research interests in this field. We investigated the prevalence, physical status, and viral load of human papillomavirus (HPV) in HNSCC to determine the impact of HPV on head and neck carcinogenesis. The prevalence and genotyping of HPV were assessed with an SPF10 PCR microtiter plate-based hybridization assay (DEIA), followed by a line probe-based genotyping assay. More than half of the patients had HPV DNA in their tumor specimens. Oncogenic HPV-16 was the most common type, and coinfections with other oncogenic and benign associated types also existed. HPV-16 viral load was unevenly distributed among different tumor sites; the tonsils harbored significantly greater amounts of virus than other sites. Episomal location of HPV-16 was associated with large tumors, and both integrated and mixed forms of viral DNA were detected. In this series, we could not show that the presence of HPV DNA correlated with survival. In addition, we investigated the prevalence and genotype of HPV in laryngeal carcinoma patients in a prospective Nordic multicenter study based on fresh-frozen laryngeal tumor samples to determine whether the tumors were HPV-associated. These patients were also examined and interviewed at diagnosis for known risk factors, such as tobacco smoking and alcohol consumption, and for several other habituations to elucidate their effects on patient survival. HPV analysis was performed with the same protocols as in the first study. Only 4% of the specimens harbored HPV DNA. Heavy drinking was associated with poor survival. Heavy drinking patients were also younger than nonheavy drinkers and had a more advanced stage of disease at diagnosis. Heavy drinkers had worse oral hygiene than nonheavy drinkers; however, poor oral hygiene did not have prognostic significance. History of chronic laryngitis, gastroesophageal reflux disease, and orogenital sex contacts were rare in this series. To clarify why vocal cord carcinomas seldom metastasize, we determined tumor lymph vessel (LVD) and blood vessel (BVD) densities in HNSCC patients. We used a novel lymphatic vessel endothelial marker (LYVE-1 antibody) to locate the lymphatic vessels in HNSCC samples and CD31 to detect the blood microvessels. We found carcinomas of the vocal cords to harbor less lymphatic and blood microvessels than carcinomas arising from sites other than vocal cords. The lymphatic and blood microvessel densities did not correlate with tumor size. High BVD was strongly correlated with high LVD. Neither BVD nor LVD showed any association with survival in our series. The immune system plays an important role in tumorigenesis, as neoplastic cells have to escape the cytotoxic lymphocytes in order to survive. Several candidate HLA class II alleles have been reported to be prognostic in cervical carcinomas, an epithelial malignancy resembling HNSCC. These alleles may have an impact on head and neck carcinomas as well. We determined HLA-DRB1* and -DQB1* alleles in HNSCC patients. Healthy organ donors served as controls. The Inno-LiPA reverse dot-blot kit was used to identify alleles in patient samples. No single haplotype was found to be predictive of either the risk for head and neck cancer, or the clinical course of the disease. However, alleles observed to be prognostic in cervical carcinomas showed a similar tendency in our series. DRB1*03 was associated with node-negative disease at diagnosis. DRB1*08 and DRB1*13 were associated with early-stage disease; DRB1*04 had a lower risk for tumor relapse; and DQB1*03 and DQB1*0502 were more frequent in controls than in patients. However, these associations reached only borderline significance in our HNSCC patients.

After the rains: Water’s impact for valuation practices

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to reduce the potential for litigation by improving valuers’ awareness of water risks. As part of a valuer’s due diligence, the paper provides guidance as to how to identify such risks by explaining the different types and examining how online search tools can be used in conjunction with more traditional methods to evaluate the probability of these risks occurring. Design/methodology/approach The paper builds on prior research, which examined the impact of water to and for valuations. By means of legal/doctrinal analysis, this paper considers relevant issues from the perspective of managing client expectations and needs. In so doing it identifies online tools available to assist in identifying at risk properties and better informing clients. Findings While the internet provides a variety of tools to gain access to relevant information, this information most commonly is only provided subject to disclaimer. Valuers need to ensure that blind reliance is not given to use of these tools but that the tools are used in conjunction with individual property inspections. Research limitations/implications Although the examples considered primarily are Australian, increasing water risks generally make the issues considered relevant for any jurisdiction. The research will be of particular interests to practitioners in coastal or riverine areas. Practical implications Valuation reports are sought for a variety of purposes from a variety of clients. These range from the experienced, knowledgeable developer looking to maximise available equity to the inexperienced, uneducated individual looking to acquire their home and thinking more often than not with their heart not their head. More informed practices by valuers will lead to valuation reports being more easily understood by clients, thus lessening the likelihood of litigation against the valuer for negligence. Originality/value The paper highlights the issue of water risks; the need for valuers to properly address potential and actual risks in their reports; and the corresponding need to undertake all appropriate searches and enquiries of the property to be valued. It reinforces the importance of access to the internet as a tool in the valuation process.

Workers are doing it for themselves? Local labor solidarity in precarious times

Historically, organized labor has played a fundamental role in guaranteeing basic rights and privileges for screen media workers and defending union and guild members (however unevenly) from egregious abuses of power. Yet, despite the recent turn to labor in media and cultural studies, organized labor today has received only scant attention, even less so in locations outside Hollywood. This presentation thus intervenes in two significant ways: first, it acknowledges the ongoing global ‘undoing’ of organized labor as a consequence of footloose production and conglomeration within the screen industries, and second, it examines a case example of worker solidarity and political praxis taking shape outside formal labor institutions in response to those structural shifts. Accordingly, it links an empirical study of individual agency to broader debates associated with the spatial dynamics of screen media production, including local capacity, regional competition, and precariousness. Drawing from ethnographic interviews with local film and television workers in Glasgow, Scotland, I consider the political alliance among three nascent labor organizations in the city: one for below-the-line crew, one for facility operators, and (oddly enough) one for producers. Collectively, the groups share a desire to transform Glasgow into a global production hub, following the infrastructure developments in nearby cities like Belfast, Prague, and Budapest. They furthermore frame their objectives in political terms: establishing global scale is considered a necessary maneuver to improve local working conditions like workplace safety, income disparity, skills training, and job access. Ultimately, I argue these groups are a product of an inadequate union structure and outdated policy vision for the screen sector , once-supportive institutions currently out of sync with the global realities of media production. Furthermore, the groups’ advocacy efforts reveal the extent to which workers themselves (in additional to capital) can seek “spatial fixes” to suture their prospects to specific political and economic goals. Of course, such activities manifest under conditions outside of the workers’ control but nevertheless point to an important tension within capitalist social relations, namely that the agency to reshape the spatial relationships in their own lives recasts the geography of labor in terms that aren’t inherent or exclusive to the interests of global capital.

Edge of Danger: electric light and the negotiation of public and private domestic space in Philip Johnson's Glass and Guest House

In the first half of the twentieth century the dematerializing of boundaries between enclosure and exposure problematized traditional expectations of the domestic environment. At the same time, as a space of escalating technological control, the modern domestic interior also offered new potential to redefine the meaning and means of habitation. The inherent tension between these opposing forces is particularly evident in the introduction of new electric lighting technology and applications into the modern domestic interior in the mid-twentieth century. Addressing this nexus of technology and domestic psychology, this article examines the critical role of electric lighting in regulating and framing both the public and private occupation of Philip Johnson's New Canaan estate. Exploring the dialectically paired transparent Glass House and opaque Guest House, this study illustrates how Johnson employed electric light to negotiate the visual environment of the estate as well as to help sustain a highly aestheticized domestic lifestyle. Contextualized within the existing literature, this analysis provides a more nuanced understanding of the New Canaan estate as an expression of Johnson's interests as a designer as well as a subversion of traditional suburban conventions.

Internet privatization, WikiLeaks, and free expression

In late 2010, the online nonprofit media organization WikiLeaks published classified documents detailing correspondence between the U.S. State Department and its diplomatic missions around the world, numbering around 250,000 cables. These diplomatic cables contained classified information with comments on world leaders, foreign states, and various international and domestic issues. Negative reactions to the publication of these cables came from both the U.S. political class (which was generally condemnatory of WikiLeaks, invoking national security concerns and the jeopardizing of U.S. interests abroad) and the corporate world, with various companies ceasing to continue to provide services to WikiLeaks despite no legal measure (e.g., a court injunction) forcing them to do so. This article focuses on the legal remedies available to WikiLeaks against this corporate suppression of its speech in the U.S. and Europe since these are the two principle arenas in which the actors concerned are operating. The transatlantic legal protection of free expression will be considered, yet, as will be explained in greater detail, the legal conception of this constitutional and fundamental right comes from a time when the state posed the greater threat to freedom. As a result, it is not generally enforceable against private, non-state entities interfering with speech and expression which is the case here. Other areas of law, namely antitrust/competition, contract and tort will then be examined to determine whether WikiLeaks and its partners can attempt to enforce their right indirectly through these other means. Finally, there will be some concluding thoughts about the implications of the corporate response to the WikiLeaks embassy cables leak for freedom of expression online.

Reengaging, reenacting and reenvisaging discourses of disaster through public space performance: Austerity, art, and the art of protest

This paper offers a mediation on disaster, recovery, resilience, and restoration of balance, in both a material and a metaphorical sense, when ‘disaster’ befalls not the body politic of the nation but the body personal. In the past few decades, of course, artists, activists and scholars have deliberately tried to avoid describing personal, physical and phenomenological experiences of the disabled body in terms of difficulty and disaster. This has been part of a political move, from a medical model, in which disability, disease and illness are positioned as personal catastrophes, to a social model, in which disability is positioned as a social construct that comes from systems, institutions and infrastructure designed to exclude different bodies. It is a move that is responsible for a certain discomfort people with disabilities, and artists with disabilities, today feel towards performances that deploy disability as a metaphor for disaster, from Hijikata, to Theatre Hora. In the past five years, though, this particular discourse has begun rising again, particularly as people with disabilities fact their own anything but natural disasters as a result of the austerity measures now widespread across the US, UK, Europe and elsewhere. Measures that threaten people’s ability to live, and take part in social and institutional life, in any meaningful way. Measures that, as artist Katherine Araniello notes, also bring additional difficulty, danger, and potential for disaster as they ripple outwards across the tides of familial ties, threatening family, friends, and careers who become bound up in the struggle to do more with less. In this paper, I consider how people with disabilities use performance, particularly public space interventionalist performance, to reengage, renact and reenvisage the discourse of national, economic, environmental or other forms of disaster, the need for austerity, the need to avoid providing people with support for desires and interests as well as basic daily needs, particularly when fraud and corruption is so right, and other such ideas that have become an all too unpleasant reality for many people. Performances, for instance, like Liz Crow’s Bedding Out, where she invited people into her bed – for people with disabilities a symbolic space, which necessarily becomes more a public living room restaurant, office and so forth than a private space when poor mobility means they spend much time it in – to talk about their lives, their difficulties, and dealing with austerity. Or, for instance, like the Bolshy Divas, who mimic public and political policy, reports and advertising paranoia to undermine their discourses about austerity. I examine the effects, politics and ethics of such interventions, including examination of the comparative effect of highly bodied interventions (like Crow’s) and highly disembodied interventions (like the Bolshy Diva’s) in discourses of difficulty, disaster and austerity on a range of target spectator communities.

The internet of playful things

This one-day workshop brings together researchers and practitioners to share knowledge and practices on how people can connect and interact with the Internet of Things in a playful way. Open to participants with a diverse range of interests and expertise, and by exploring novel ways to playfully connect people through their everyday objects and activities, the workshop will facilitate discussion across a range of HCI discipline areas. The outcomes from the workshop will include an archive of participants' initial position papers along with the materials created during the workshop. The result will be a road map to support the development of a Model of Playful Connectedness, focusing on how best to design and make playful networks of things, identifying the challenges that need to be addressed in order to do so.

Selective dissemination of XML documents based on genetically learned user model and Support Vector Machines

Extensible Markup Language ( XML) has emerged as a medium for interoperability over the Internet. As the number of documents published in the form of XML is increasing, there is a need for selective dissemination of XML documents based on user interests. In the proposed technique, a combination of Adaptive Genetic Algorithms and multi class Support Vector Machine ( SVM) is used to learn a user model. Based on the feedback from the users, the system automatically adapts to the user's preference and interests. The user model and a similarity metric are used for selective dissemination of a continuous stream of XML documents. Experimental evaluations performed over a wide range of XML documents, indicate that the proposed approach significantly improves the performance of the selective dissemination task, with respect to accuracy and efficiency.

Rural first year university students: As engaged, aspirational and motivated as anyone – but different science ‘choices’ in year 12 and university

This paper reports on findings from the Interests and Recruitment in Science study, which explored the experiences of first year students studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) courses in Australian universities. First year STEM students who went to school in rural or regional areas were as engaged, aspirational and motivated as their more metropolitan counterparts. However, they were less likely to have studied physics or advance mathematics, and more likely to have enrolled in an Agricultural or Environmental Science degree. The relationships between these results and broader contextual issues such as employment and Higher Education budgetary and policy settings are discussed.

Human Rights in Action

In the post-World War II era human rights have emerged as an enormous global phenomenon. In Finland human rights have particularly in the 1990s moved from the periphery to the center of public policy making and political rhetoric. Human rights education is commonly viewed as the decisive vehicle for emancipating individuals of oppressive societal structures and rendering them conscious of the equal value of others; both core ideals of the abstract discourse. Yet little empirical research has been conducted on how these goals are realized in practice. These factors provide the background for the present study which, by combining anthropological insights with critical legal theory, has analyzed the educational activities of a Scandinavian and Nordic network of human rights experts and PhD students in 2002-2005. This material has been complemented by data from the proceedings of UN human rights treaty bodies, hearings organized by the Finnish Foreign Ministry, the analysis of different human rights documents as well as the manner human rights are talked of in the Finnish media. As the human rights phenomenon has expanded, human rights experts have acquired widespread societal influence. The content of human rights remains, nevertheless, ambiguous: on the one hand they are law, on the other, part of a moral discourse. By educating laymen on what human rights are, experts act both as intermediaries and activists who expand the scope of rights and simultaneously exert increasing political influence. In the educational activities of the analyzed network these roles were visible in the rhetorics of legality and legitimacy . Among experts both of these rhetorics are subject to ongoing professional controversy, yet in the network they are presented as undisputable facts. This contributes to the impression that human rights knowledge is uncontested. This study demonstrates how the network s activities embody and strengthen a conception of expertise as located in specific, structurally determined individuals. Simultaneously its conception of learning emphasizes the adoption of knowledge by students, emphasizing the power of experts over them. The majority of the network s experts are Nordic males, whereas its students are predominantly Nordic females and males from East-European and developing countries. Contrary to the ideals of the discourse the network s activities do not create dialogue, but instead repeat power structures which are themselves problematic.

Selective dissemination of XML documents based on genetically learned user model and Support Vector Machines

Extensible Markup Language ( XML) has emerged as a medium for interoperability over the Internet. As the number of documents published in the form of XML is increasing, there is a need for selective dissemination of XML documents based on user interests. In the proposed technique, a combination of Adaptive Genetic Algorithms and multi class Support Vector Machine ( SVM) is used to learn a user model. Based on the feedback from the users, the system automatically adapts to the user's preference and interests. The user model and a similarity metric are used for selective dissemination of a continuous stream of XML documents. Experimental evaluations performed over a wide range of XML documents, indicate that the proposed approach significantly improves the performance of the selective dissemination task, with respect to accuracy and efficiency.